Today’s reading from the eighth chapter of
the Acts of the Apostles represents a key moment in the life of a congregation
we might call St. Swithin’s, Jerusalem. If you have never sat down and read Acts
from beginning to end, I encourage you to find some time to do so. Acts is a sequel, written by the same writer (or
community of writers) who brought us Luke’s Gospel, which ends with the Ascension; forty days after Easter, Jesus departs, promising
to send the Holy Spirit to lead and guide that beleaguered bunch into all truth.
Acts begins with Jews from all over
the Mediterranean gathered in Jerusalem and waiting. Right on cue, on the
fiftieth day, the Holy Spirit arrives like “tongues of fire” and among a “great
rush of wind.” This happens in chapter two of Acts. By
the end, the gospel is spreading like wildfire to the ends of the earth. (That’s
what happens when you combine wind and fire!) By welcoming the stranger, the
Jewish-Christian community becomes a Gentile- Christian community. The story
about the Baptism of the Ethiopian eunuch represents a key turning point in
that transformation.
It would be more accurate to refer to “The Acts of the
Apostles”—as “The Acts of the Holy Spirit” because without a doubt, it
is the third person of the Trinity who is the star of the show; the apostles
are, at best, supporting actors. Luke is
very clear that whenever the apostles do something really good, it is not
because they are acting out of their own agendas but at the urging of the
Spirit. Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch
have roles to play in the story we heard today, but what is clear from
beginning to end is that the Holy Spirit is prodding them to act as they do. In every generation we would do well to remember this
truth: that it is not us, but the Holy Spirit, who is in charge of
congregations, leading, prodding and guiding us into all Truth.
One
thing seems very clear: the Spirit isn’t interested in building a club of
like-minded people. She keeps pushing the apostles outward from Jerusalem,
beyond their comfort zones to encounter “the other.” The Spirit doesn’t seem to
just tolerate diversity but to crave
it, breaking down barriers so that (as Paul will later famously put it) “in
Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, neither male
nor female.” As you will recall, before
he could make such a bold claim he was traveling on the way to Damascus where
he was blinded, in order to see. With a new name to represent his new life and
calling, he becomes Paul and is received as one of these apostles. Through him,
Gentiles from as far off as Corinth and Ephesus and Galatia and eventually even
Rome become part of this Jesus movement. All of this seems to be part of what
the Spirit is up to as the church is enlivened and the face of the earth is
renewed.
So,
as we heard today, we are out on the Gaza Strip when Philip encounters this
eunuch, court official of Candace, Queen of Ethiopia. He probably comes from
what we would call the northern Sudan today. From the perspective of the Middle
East, that represents just about the edge of the known world—it’s far away. It
isn’t just that his skin color is different and darker than the olive skin
tones in the Middle East. In contrast to these Galilean fishermen, this is a
well-connected member of the Queen’s cabinet, the Secretary of the Treasury if
you will. He moves in important circles.
And
he is a eunuch. Since this is a family show, I’m going to leave that one
for you to Google when you get home, if you aren’t quite clear what that means.
When I taught undergraduates at Assumption College I always expected
them to blush when we read this story, but mostly I got used to blank stares
when I asked them if they knew what a eunuch was. It is important to
understand that this
Ethiopian eunuch is doubly outside of the Covenant: first because he is a goyim and secondly because he is a
eunuch. It doesn’t matter that he is a V.I.P. with the Queen of Ethiopia! The Bible
says that “eunuchs are not to be admitted to the assembly of the Lord.” (See Deuteronomy 23:1; the Word of the Lord/Thanks be to God?)
So
this guy is different from Philip. He’s different racially. He’s different socio-economically.
He’s different in terms of his educational level. He’s different religiously. He’s
different sexually.
Have you all met the Rev. Laura Everett?
She’s the Executive Director of the Massachusetts Council of Churches. Every year
when she is invited to our Diocesan Convention to bring ecumenical greetings,
we give her the dreaded post-lunch slot because it doesn’t matter: no one will
feel sleepy when Laura Everett opens her mouth! This week I came across a powerful sermon she preached on this very text at a preaching conference, where she told
preachers this: to fully preach the gospel, we need to sit side by
side with people wildly different from us.
Amen. Only given our context today, I want to expand
that to say that to fully hear the
gospel and to really live the gospel,
we all - clergy and laity - need to sit side-by-side with people wildly different from us. I want to
even insist that this is what the Church is for. This is how the Holy Spirit does
Her best work. This is how transformation happens. This is how strangers become
friends. This is how we do the Lord’s work. We have been taught to fear, and
sometimes even to hate the stranger, but the work of reconciliation that the
risen Christ has entrusted to us is about learning to love the stranger, and
that begins by sitting side by side with people wildly different from us.
Before accepting my current position on the Bishop’s
staff, I served as the rector of a suburban parish for fifteen years. A few
years after my arrival there, we hired a Music Director from Nigeria; a dark-skinned
man working in a very white congregation in a very white suburb. Sometimes on Sunday
mornings he’d be late – later than I appreciated as his boss. But he was
embarrassed to tell me why until I pushed him, and then he admitted that he
needed to allow more time because very often on Sunday mornings he was getting pulled
over by the police. Not once or twice. It had become more of a regular thing: driving
while black in a white suburb where it was being made clear he didn’t belong. Eventually I intervened with another parishioner and we went to see
the Chief of Police and we got things cleared up for him, although of course
didn’t solve the larger problem.
Fast forward: some time passes and I am asked to serve as the volunteer chaplain to that same police
department. I say yes and over the next few years I start spending time with the cops: ride-alongs
with officers, accompanying them on death notifications, social events. Even though cops don’t tend as a rule to be very expressive about their
emotional lives, through all those encounters I got to know something about
them and their families, something of what they cared about and what they feared. I
grew to care for them.
To fully understand the gospel, we need to sit side
by side with people wildly different from us. I am neither an African musician
nor a Holden cop. But over time my relationships with both changed me for good.
What I really yearn for, though, is a world where they might sit side by side
for a while. I say this with zero sentimentality or naiveté. I wish I could
find a way for my black friends who suffer indignities as a matter of course in their daily lives to sit
side-by-side with police officers late at night when even the most routine
stop can make your heart beat a little faster because you don’t know what might
happen when you walk up to that car you just pulled over, but you are well aware
of the worst that could happen. I wonder what might happen if they could sit side by side for a while and hear each other's stories, and what might happen if there were more
of these kinds of shared experiences in Ferguson and in Baltimore and across
this country, where people who are wildly different from each other could sit side by side and pray and read Scripture
together and listen to one another? Crazy, right?
This sermon doesn’t have a neat and tidy ending. The
world we live in is a mess. But I think that near and far this is the work we
are called to do. It’s not politics; it’s ministry. It’s about our call through Holy Baptism to respect the dignity of every human being, and to work for justice and peace for all people. No exceptions. We are called to be ambassadors
of reconciliation. We need to sit with those we don’t understand or know and share
our stories, our hopes, our dreams: Christians and Muslims, Democrats and
Republicans, card-carrying members of the NRA and pacifists. Because when that happens the world is made
new, and the healing and reconciliation that come of those encounters are the
surest signs of the presence of the Holy Spirit and of the risen Christ that I
know of.
A friend of mine recently shared with me a bit about the journey that she, as a married lesbian priest, has been on with a
parishioner who told her when she arrived as a new rector five years ago
that she wasn’t so keen on having a lesbian priest. It’s not been easy for
either of them, but they have hung in there and they have grown together and in the
process both have been changed for good. In my experience this is how it
usually works: maybe change happens quickly on a sunny afternoon on the Gaza
Strip, but far more often it happens over time and along a circuitous path with its
ups and downs. In any case, however, the Spirit continues to bring us into one
another’s lives and we sit or we walk, side by side with people wildly
different from us. And God is present, and every now and again strangers
become friends. And when that happens, lives are transformed and the world is
made new.
As
it happens with Philip and the eunuch, the conversation eventually leads to a
question: “what is to prevent me from being baptized?” It’s a question that
has everything to do with this guy’s recent trip to the temple and with Deuteronomy
23:1—which seems to make it clear that this man will not be welcomed into that assembly. So what he is really
asking Philip is whether or not this
community that claims Jesus as the suffering servant is big enough for him. Can
the risen Christ break down even this barrier? Is there room for him at the
Table? The answer, of course, is that there is; and so they find some water and
he is baptized…
Baptism
is not a private transaction between the eunuch and God. It is
not about fire insurance or about getting his ticket to heaven punched. By
water and the Spirit, this Ethiopian
eunuch is drawn into the faith community and incorporated into that mystic
sweet communion, that fellowship divine. And when that happens, there is no
longer “them” and “us,” but only “us”trying to faithfully live into the promises we have made, or that have been made on our behalf. That changes the Body which grows not
only in number but in gifts, and is stretched and transformed as new wine
requires new wineskins. The community is formed not around ideology or doctrine,
but around the love of God in Jesus Christ, a community where water is thicker than blood.
Too
many people (in the name of Christ) tell too many people no. No, you are not
welcome here. No, you don’t belong. No, you can’t be baptized. It’s easy to
tell people no. And I think there are a lot of malchurched people in our
neighborhoods, maybe even more than there are unchurched folks out there, for whom that
is what Christianity is. So we have our work cut out for us.
We have good news
to share in the name of the risen Christ: to be witnesses to the truth that
love trumps fear; to be a cast of supporting characters who are paying
attention to what the Spirit is up to as walls are broken down, and the face of
the earth is renewed, and as the saints are equipped to become ambassadors of
reconciliation as we sit with those wildly different from us.
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